Unpopular Opinions: No New Animaniacs!

Here’s an unpopular opinion, for you; I DON’T think there should ever be a revival of Animaniacs!

“HATER! You hate Animaniacs! You hate fun!”

It’s not that I disliked Animaniacs. Quite the opposite. I loved Animaniacs. In fact, that’s part of why I hope that Warner Brothers never attempts to revive the series. A! was one of those shows that was perfect for it’s time and succeeded because of a number of specific circumstances which can’t be replicated.

Think about it; A! made the scene in 1993. This was hot on the heels of Tiny Toon Adventures. The Warner Brothers’ Silver Age was in full swing. Broadcast network weekday afternoon kids’ blocks like Fox Kids and Kids WB! were still alive and kicking. The circumstances were perfect for A! to arrive on the scene and when it did, it was glorious. But just because it worked then, doesn’t mean that it would work now.

Some things are best left in the era in which they thrived. Does anyone want to see, say, Eek! the Cat suddenly pop back into existence so we can find out what he’s been up to for the past 2 decades?

I enjoyed Eek!, but I have no desire to see Eek!stravangaza updated for 21st century. The cartoon was very 1990s.

Animaniacs has been out of production for over a decade now. All of the cast and crew of the show have moved on to do other things. Does anyone honestly believe that Warner Brothers could simply bring back the original writers, directors and voice actors and simply continue at the precise point in the series where it left off?

First, a new A! would most likley have to air on Cartoon Network, since Kids’ WB! doesn’t exist anymore and WB co-owns CN with Turner Broadcasting. Does anyone remember when Cartoon Network decided to revive Dexter’s Laboratory and there were a bunch of things different about the new series and almost everyone hated it? Does anyone remember Xiaolin Chronicles?

Open a window. Something stinks in here!

I’ve seen what happened when shows like Xiaolin Showdown, Dexter’s Lab and The Powerpuff Girls got revived or rebooted, and I know that if A! were to get a revival, then same fans who’ve been whining and moaning for new A! and starting “movements” on Facebook and the like would then be carping and griping non-stop about how the new show stinks and that this new reboot ruins their memories of the original.

“I’m going to make a 10 part YouTube video about everything wrong with the Animaniacs reboot and why it fails.”

I really don’t want to see this happen with one of favorite cartoons of all time. There’s no way the show will ever be as good as it once was, even if it was revived. so I say just leave it alone and enjoy what we had.

Of course, if you’re asking me if I’d like to see Warner Brothers produce a new and original animated series with a similar level of energy, feel and creativity as Animaniacs!, then yeah, I’d be all for that.

Like this:

Related

Post navigation

34 Comments

silverstar

June 21, 2016 – 3:23 pm

At the very most I could see WB taking one segment from Animaniacs and spinning it off into its’ own series a la Pinky & the Brain. For example, I could see a Slappy and Skippy spinoff where the characters engage on slapstick shorts a la Wabbit: A Looney Tunes Production, but a full-blown A! revival? No, Warner shouldn’t ever try that.

You know, if I’m being brutally honest with myself, looking back I mainly watched A! for the Warners and Slappy, and to a lesser extent Pinky & the Brain and the Goodfeathers. I didn’t really care about the other segments.

Well, it’s official; Hollywood is out of original ideas. The current mode of thinking for Hollywood executives seems to be “Why should we bother coming up with anything new when we can just revive shows from 20 years ago?” I really hope that this reboot won’t suffer the same fate as Powerpuff Girls 2016.

That article says that producers don’t have a home for this reboot as of yet. I would have thought that Cartoon Network would have been an obvious choice, since CN is co-owned by Warner Brothers, but if CN isn’t interested in airing it, what does that say about the quality of the product?

Regarding your second paragraph: It’s WAY too early to announce a network just yet. It was literally just announced mere hours ago. It sounds to me like Amblin and WB are in the pre-planning stages. They can worry about a broadcast network later.

I still think they should leave well enough alone. I hope this will at least have some of the original producers and writers working on it, otherwise why bother? The fact that Craig McCracken wasn’t going to be involved in the 2016 Powerpuff Girls reboot should have been a HUGE red flag not to go ahead with ahead with it, but that series is apparently popular with kids, even though the nostalgic adults who grew up with the original hate it with a passion. Either way, this doesn’t bode well.

I’m generally not too fond of reboots. Who exactly benefits from watching a reboot? Old fans will chase after the producers with pitchforks if they change anything, and the reboot itself truly rides on the younger viewers who will fund it; if said reboot does badly with them, then the show’s D.O.A. Why go through the stress of trying to please 2 different demographics when you can just make a new show/product and only worry about the kiddies? I say these producers should focus on making newer, original content instead of re-heating old properties that make it harder to get a following.

I still think an Animaniacs reboot is a bad idea, but if Warner and Amblin really must do this, I’d like to make a suggestion: maybe they could swap out the less popular segments like Hip Hippos and Katie-Ka-Boom and replace them with new segments? That would keep things fresh and interesting, and give viewers something new to see so this wouldn’t just be a 100% rehash. If the producers just try to flat-out recycle everything, this reboot is just gonna get old real fast, plus some of the A! segments were limp when they were new.

I’m kind of surprised that the reboot is going to be on Hulu rather than Netflix, since it was the reruns airing on Netflix that sparked the desire to reboot the show in the first place. I think I’ll wait for the reviews before checking this out. I don’t see the point of paying a monthly subscription for a service for just one show, especially if said show turns out to not be very good. If the A! reboot turns out to be another Powerpuff Girls 2016, I’ll just save my money. In any case, this won’t happen until 2020, so there’s time to decide.

This is a reboot that I wasn’t asking for. I still stand by my original statement that Animaniacs was a ton of fun, but it doesn’t need to come back. However, if the reboot is actually good, then good on them.

I’m not too surprised with the new Animaniacs going to Hulu instead of Netflix given that a similar situation happened to Young Justice when it got revived for season 3, where its Netflix and DVD sales helped out, but season 3 (called Young Justice Outsiders) will debut on a new, currently unnamed DC streaming service.

One thing I forgot to mention is that, though it could change overtime, none of the original Animaniacs writers and directors, including series creator Tom Ruegger, were asked to work on the new series. I know some like Earl Kress and Liz Holzman died years ago, while Sherri Stoner is currently on Mickey And The Roadster Racers and Charles Visser is on Dorothy And The Wizard Of Oz.

Sherri Stoner hasn’t been contacted? Ms. Stoner was not only the voice of Slappy Squirrel, but she was also one of the series’ writers and was largely responsible for bringing the character to life. This either means that Slappy Squirrel isn’t going to be featured in the reboot or that the character will be voiced by someone else. Either way, as Sonic Sez: “That’s no good!”.

Maybe it’s a cultural thing, but I can never really see why Animaniacs is still so highly (and fervently) regarded. That may be because I’m from the UK where the series never really did as well as other WB cartoons, to my knowledge. I don’t recall it being as popular.

On the other side of the coin, I still enjoy Tiny Toons and Taz-Mania, but Animaniacs was too hit-and-miss for me, with too much miss and not enough hit. I seem to recall a lot of the cultural references going way over my head too. Again, this is from a UK perspective and there was a lot of US specific humour in it from what I remember.

Pinky & The Brain was great though. Glad they had the sense to spin them off into their own thing.

I mentioned this earlier elsewhere, but for me anyway, the main A! segments that clicked with me were the Warners of course, and Slappy Squirrel, and to a lesser extent Pinky & the Brain. I could either take or leave or just didn’t care much for or about the other segments.

I’m going to state an Unpopular Opinion here: I never thought Pinky & the Brain deserved their own show. They were fine as one segment among several on A!, but when placed front and center, the shortcomings of P&tB became all too obvious, no doubt in part because it was basically the same thing over and over. If WB were going to spin a segment off from A!, I would’ve taken Slappy Squirrel over Pinky and the Brain in an anvil-dropping split second. Why didn’t WB give Slappy her own show? I’d have watched the heck out of that. Admittedly, I haven’t seen Taz-Mania in a while, but when I last recall viewing it, the show didn’t really age well; while there were some good jokes, I found it overall to be too ‘meta’ and inside for its’ own good. A lot of that can be attributed to the simple fact that Taz really isn’t that deep or layered a character to build an entire series around. Just my opinion, though.

I don’t recall there really being all that much US-specific humor on A!; they did a lot of Hollywood and media takeoffs as well as pop-culture references, but so did Tiny Toons and Pinky & the Brain (in the case of the latter, even more so as its’ own series than as a recurring bit on Animaniacs), in fact ripping on showbiz is more or less a Warner Bros. staple. None of the jokes were lost on me, but it should be noted that I was already an adult when A! debuted; those who were kids when the show was first run might’ve missed some of the jokes initially. A lot of the Looney Tunes shorts were like that as well; they were originally aimed at an adult movie-going audience, so a lot of kids who first encountered the Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies shorts on TV often say that there are/were a lot of gags that they didn’t get until they got older.

I’ve never heard of the guy. Sorry. The A! reboot seems to be bringing in a entirely new set of writers/directors and none of the originals. I don’t know it that’s a good thing or not.

I know that everything comes back in nostalgia after about 20 years, but honestly, I’m kind of burnt out with all these reboots (although I am looking forward to the Rocko’s Modern Life special later this year). How about some new and original ideas now, Hollywood?

I’m pretty sure the Rocko’s Modern Life movie is a revival since creator Joe Murray is involved, and it’s directly acknowledging the fact that its continuing from where the 1990s run of the show left. Reboots start over from scratch, like with this series.

Back on point, it’s not uncommon for those who were in adult shows to move onto to working on kids shows and family movies, such as Eric Rogers going from Futurama and Brickleberry to Littlest Pet Shop (2012) and Skylanders Academy.

I know that Rocko’s Modern Life: Static Cling is a revival, not a reboot. I was merely making the point that I’m tired of studios just reviving already existing properties from 20 years ago instead of working on original projects. A little nostalgia is OK once in a while, but you can’t feed and clothe yourself on it. Also, Static Cling is only an hour long (about 52 minutes without commercials), so it’s a special, not a movie.

Not sure if the link works, but one of the crew members for the series is Jessica Borutski. She did some character designs for The Looney Tunes Show and Ren And Stimpy Adult Party Cartoon, directed a few episodes of Wabbit, and served as the showrunner for the Bunnicula. Coincidentally, her boyfriend Eric Bauza was in all four shows.

Katie Rice is working on new Animaniacs. At least she’s finding work to do. I’m willing to bet those designs are just rough sketches and not anything finalized. You may also remember her as one of the teenagers that John Kricfalusi sexually assaulted.

Like I said before, the Animaniacs reboot is set to debut in 2020. A lot could happen between now and then, so I’m just going to wait until the launch date to see how things pan out. As hard as I try, I just can’t get excited about this. I still believe that A! was lightning in a bottle and that Warner Brothers should just leave well enough alone, hence why I typed my initial post in the first place.

Also, I hadn’t heard anything about John Kricfalusi sexually assaulting teenagers until I read your comment just now. I’m really out of the loop!

I know it’s probably best to not revive this given what everyone here is doing for the future of this website, but it’s interesting to bring up. Paul Rugg mentioned how he’s not working on the Animaniacs, and gives an interesting reason why he’s not working on the series.

I see Mr. Rugg’s point. The only reason why I personally would ever reboot a series of mine (particularly something from longer than 5-10 years ago) is if I thought that I could do it better. The reboots of DuckTales and Muppet Babies worked because in both cases, there was room for improvement. Animaniacs, by contrast, was lightning in a bottle and doesn’t need to be improved upon. It’s like Raven Simone coming back to Disney Channel to be on Raven’s Home or cast members from Full House coming back to be on Fuller House; it’s seems kind of sad to just return to do something that you already did 20 years earlier, especially if it’s just going to be the same thing all over again. If a team of fresh young new writers want to try their hand at making a revolutionary new cartoon show, then why not just make an original series with all new characters instead of trying reboot something that doesn’t need to be revived?

And with that, friends, the above is the last one of the Animaniacs reboot comments that I’ll be publishing here. This post was supposed to just be me rambling my fool head off to thin air about why I felt that no one should ever attempt to reboot A!, and then some jerk had to go and do the very thing that I felt shouldn’t be done in the first place! So now it’s since become a play-by-play update on the reboot’s status. I didn’t intend for this post to be the Animanics Reboot Speculation Thread, and I’m kind of annoyed that this is what’s it’s mutated into. The reboot’s not supposed to happen until next year, maybe I’ll check it out then, although I’m not expecting much, honestly, but until then, I prefer to just wait and see.

My final thoughts on this subject (before seeing the reboot, that is):

Paul Rugg isn’t working on this new A! series because he’s been there and done that; similarly, I’m not Jonesing for this new A! series because I’ve been there and seen that. As I previously stated, unless the producers are going to swap out the weaker and played out segments (i.e. all of the ones that weren’t the Warners, Slappy and Pinky & the Brain) and replace them with new segments and characters, then I really don’t get why they’re doing this. Animaniacs did what it set out to do, and it kind of stuck around a little longer than it probably should’ve, IMNSHO.

Now if I said this on the Anime Superhero Forum (formerly Toon Zone), some wag would give me a frowny face emoticon and say something like, “You don’t like Animanaics, do you? Why do you want this show to fail?”, to which I would say, put down the beer, Chuckles. Why would I want this show to fail? What would I stand to gain from this reboot tanking (other than bragging rights)? I thought A! was great and I’d like for this reboot to be awesome, I just don’t think it’s going to be; odds aren’t in this show’s favor. The fact that the original producers, writers and directors are either opting to skip this show or just plain weren’t contacted in the first place should be a HUGE red flag for the viewers. Time will tell of course, but I’m just not getting a positive vibe from this.

Just a quick heads-up, folks: for those who don’t know or are new here, we’re not taking any further comments about the A! reboot on this site, ’cause that’s not what this post was for. The point was that the author (Jason/Goldstar) feels that there SHOULDN’T be a new Animaniacs; therefore turning this into an A! reboot speculation/news thread goes against the original point of the post. So no future comments regarding the reboot will be published here. Nothing personal, but we’ve said all that we want to say about this new A! series. Hope you understand.